e-publishing to largest potential buyers?

I don't think you need to look at formats as much as vendors. A lot of the formats are easily changed from one to another once you have an established file. And you don't have to buy an ISBN for Kindle, B&N or Smashwords. Actually, if you go through Smashwords, they will give you an ISBN for free.

ePub and PDF have arguably the best reach in terms of device compatibility, although DRM makes things a little more complicated. You might want to consider adding the Kindle format to those two for the best reach.

I would agree with Cath. Probably epub, pdf, mobi (kindle). Perhaps also consider a very basic format like plain text, rtf or html.

You can put the same book up on multiple hosting sites.

Konrath has his books up on as many as possible. I've the same books up on four hosting sites. They're all selling. Kindle has the most sales. Smashwords 2nd, PubIt! is a distant third. It took them ages to get my book into their system and they pay the least in royalties, but they are selling.

Even if you sell 20 books on Kindle, someone else might prefer to buy that book through Nook, because they don't have a Kindle reader. Give them the opportunity to buy it there, too.


Essentially, it's like selling the same product through multiple outlets. Say you're selling soap. You'll have that soap in Walmart, Target, the grocers, the drugstore up the street. Same soap, same price in all of the stores, you get paid when one sells.

The more stores carrying your soap the more overall sales you get.

As Konrath and others maintain, it is a marathon, not a sprint.